All things are not the same

The Church in Wales says it is investigating after a Gwynedd rector burnt some pages from the Bible.

The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth of St Peter ad Vincula Church, Pennal, also cut up pages from the King James Bible to create an artwork.

...

Mr ap Iorwerth told BBC Wales he had burnt scraps of cut up the passages at the public event because he had been making a statement as part of an art experiment.

Reaction?

Was there mass protests across the globe held in "Christian" nations proclaiming death and retribution to those who would desecrate their Holy text?

Nope.

An elderly woman from across the street said that she understood the man's point but that it didn't offend her.

Dead or alive

Recently I read an article from the BBC about a program being offered in Turkey called "Muslim for a Month - a programme from social enterprise group The Blood Foundation where participants get to "test-drive" a religion."

Interesting idea.

There were a few things about this struck me.

Firstly, the people in the article talked about it as essentially cultural exchange. It was an opportunity to get to know a culture more fully in order to help them with people living in their own neighborhoods back home or to simply expand their understanding of Muslim culture.

Participants pray, fast, have lectures from Muslim scholars and spend time with Turkish families. Most are here for their first taste of Islam, but some for a deeper understanding of the Sufi culture of Turkey.

Not a bad thing, but I think what has been lost here is that religion is not culture. Sure there is a religious culture and sure cultures can and do include religions in which there is overlap, but one can't say, for instance, that Western culture is Christian culture. They are separate things and while there is some areas of similarity there are also areas of divergence.

This I think leads to a seeming a dichotomy between how the participants (at least those that are included in the article) approach the program and how those who lead the program think it should be approached.

From the standpoint of the program leaders I think that they intended this cultural exchange element to part of the program. To help people see the religion from the inside and to see the practitioners as people not as a faceless mass or even worse, as terrorists.

However I can't help but think that the core concept behind the program is evangelism. They are bringing people to Turkey to "try on" the Muslim religion in hopes that some will "buy into" it and convert to Islam.

Not a bad idea. I mean even people such as Richard Dawkins hold camps to help people become atheists. Numerous Christian churches host retreats or programs to help draw people's interest.

But this is the other thing that struck me about the article and the dichotomy between the participants and the leaders.

One would think that the leaders of the conference would hope that those taking part in the program would have an experience with Allah through the ritual of Muslim practice. This experience would then lead to conversion not simply to a better understanding of Muslim culture. But perhaps I'm just thinking too much in Christian terms and I guess that that is perhaps a point of difference between Islam and Christianity.

Christianity isn't about doing things. We do do things. We attend Church, we fellowship, we pray, we serve, we do all sorts of things but we don't do them to become Christians, we do them because we are Christians.

We are Christians because we have experienced the living God and have understood the truth of Christ's death, resurrection and all that it means. Belief did not come through my actions, my actions are the result of my belief and experience and one can't 'become' a Christian by doing things. One can only become a Christian when they are called by the living God and until that happens there is a clear gulf between those that are ritual Christians and those that are believing Christians. The former do things and hope to experience God in those moments. The latter have experienced God and as a result act. For one its a ritual of formality, for the other its a ritual of devotion and meaning.

The north and the south

Recently I attended a speech contest conducted by a local school featuring students ranging from grades one through five. The topic for the contest was the reunification of the Korean peninsula. This is not something new. I’ve seen this several times and the students (even if I can’t understand all that they are saying) clearly speak with passion in support of the idea that the North and South should be unified.

I’ve tried talking with some adults about the issue and they seem much more cautious about the idea, but it is still something that they would like to see come to pass.

I think that a unified Korea would be good for the world. The regime in the North is unstable in its relations internationally and it subjects its people to a level of suffering that we in the West simply can’t understand.

However if such unification was to be possible it must be done with eyes wide open to the realities that the South would face. Emotion must be put aside in the face of pragmatism.

The South has a population nearing 49 million. The North’s population is half that at 24.5 million.

The South is a relatively rich nation with an estimated GDP of $1.5 trillion that provides a GDP per capita number of $30,000.

The North by comparison is an extremely poor nation with a GDP of $40 billion which represents a per capita GDP of only $1,800.

Unification given these facts could not happen quickly. It would have to be a long drawn out process where the North was controlled politically by the South but its economy would have to be segregated from the economy of the South. This would be necessary so that the South could try to grow the economy in the North to bring it much more in line with the South’s economy so that the South did not suffer economic shock that could cripple it for years.

This would of course be a hard sell.

It would be easy for the South to accept as it would have little impact on their standard of living and so many would support it on economic grounds, but what about the human element?

Would those in the North accept being controlled by the South but still being subjected to extreme poverty for several more years or would they demand that the South spread the wealth and raise the standard of living for those in the North?

Would Southerners be willing to stand by and watch their Northern brothers and sisters continued to suffer all because the South was unwilling to make some sacrifices.

It would be a delicate situation to handle to be sure.

The economic reality though is that a combined economy would only raise the GDP from $1.5 trillion to $1.56 trillion, a mere 4% increase; however the population would increase by 50% from 49 million to 73.5 million.

The reality of this is that the GDP per capita for those in the South would change from $30,000 to a little over $21,000. This of course would be a dramatic increase in the standard of living for those in the North though. The sad fact would be that this $9,000 drop in GDPpc in the South would be most felt by the poorest in a country that already has 15% of its population living below the poverty line.

It’s a situation with no easy or simple answer. It’s a daunting situation and one that will take much effort and sacrifice to see fulfilled.